“There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy”
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Context: ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his Army, to consider that in less than a Hundred Years they would be all Dead. Anacreon was' Choakt with a Grape-stone, and violent Joy Kills as well as violent Grief. There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy; yet Plato thought that if Virtue would appear to the World in her own native Dress, all Men would be Enamoured with her. But now since Interest governs the World, and Men neglect the Golden Mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the Earth would be Despised, unless it were as he did to Danae in a Golden Shower. For Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.
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Jonathan Swift 141
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet 1667–1745Related quotes
St. 1
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)
Context: The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
Diary of an Unknown (1988)
“It's a constant man-ego-check going on in the streets, in this world.”
1990s, Ed Gordon interview (1994)
“Man is a paradoxical being-the constant glory and scandal of this world.”
As quoted in Thoughts On The Business Of Life http://thoughts.forbes.com/thoughts/man-sarvepalli-radhakrishnan-man-is-a, thoughts.forbes.com
Source: In the Sanctuary of the Soul: A Guide to Effective Prayer